Crimson Veil

Chapter 2

I leaned in to feel for a pulse. The scent of blood hung lightly in the air and, right off, I could see the woman had sustained several cuts from broken glass, though none of them looked like they were bleeding out.

While the adrenaline rush of fear didn’t work on me the same way it did for someone who was alive, the psychological aspects were still there and they set me on edge. My thirst rose at the scent of blood, but I pushed it down, burying it as I took her hand in mine and felt for the beat of her pulse.

There… yes, strong, if a little fast. The emergency dispatcher had said a unit would be here in minutes, and I tried to gauge whether she needed help before then. But at that moment, the woman jerked back as she opened her eyes and sucked in a deep breath.

“You’re alive.” She stared at me.

“Yeah, I lucked out. How are you? Can you move? The cops are on the way, along with fire department and an ambulance.”

She frowned and began to shift, trying to get out from behind the steering wheel, which had been pushed toward her. “You’ve already called them then?”

I eased the seat back—luckily the controls still worked—and offered her my hand. “Yes, I figured I’d better. They’ll be here in a few minutes. Are you hurt?”

She shook her head and, ignoring my hand, slid out of the SUV, easing past the skewed metal frame. I stood to the side as she struggled away from the twisted auto.

When she had fully stepped away from the car, I realized she was Fae. Which probably accounted for her being more shaken than hurt.

She eyed me up and down. “Well, that was exciting. You’re sure you’re all right?” Her jacket hung oddly on her and she didn’t look terribly pulled together. The jeans and motorcycle boots beneath the soccer-mom camel coat didn’t jive.

Slowly, I edged back. “I’m fine. Shaken, but okay.”

“Good. Very good.”

As I glanced at her, rain pounded down, illuminated by the streetlights on the side of the road, and I could have sworn that she was scowling. Oh yeah. Alarm bells, for sure. But then again, could the alarms be ringing because I was already having a horrible week?

“Maybe we should move away from the cars, just in case there’s a gas leak.” I wanted to ask her what happened—why she’d been screeching out of the driveway so fast. But all the insurance agencies warned against saying anything about the actual accident, and I doubted if she was going to admit her fault.

She followed me, but stood a respectful distance as I put in a call to Bowman’s Towing. My Jag had a lot of what looked like superficial damage—a lot of scrapes and the passenger door looked dented where I’d slammed into her. It would take a complete inspection to figure out just what kind of a mess I was looking at. If she’d hit me at a slightly different angle, my car would have been totaled and I could have easily either gone up in flames, or been skewered by some piece of metal.

But the SUV… when she had glanced off my car, she’d spun and hit into the concrete retaining wall, which had caved in the driver’s side of her vehicle.

“Seems we’ve had quite the little adventure.” She sounded almost disappointed.

“Yeah. But I’d rather get my adventure from somewhere else.” I gave her the once-over. Something wasn’t tracking right. “I’m Menolly D’Artigo.”

She nodded. “Eisha te Kana.” After a pause, she added, “You sure you’re okay?”

Why did she keep asking that? It wasn’t like I could sustain any real internal injuries. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“Good. You know, I have to be somewhere in a hurry. Let me give you my insurance information, and then, if I can still drive that hunk of metal, I’ll be off.” She headed back to her car.

I was about to protest—there was no way in hell that she could get the SUV going again, but paused, something nagging the back of my brain. Then it hit me—why wasn’t she running up to her house? She’d pulled out of a driveway. So either she lived there, or had been visiting a friend. Either way, wouldn’t she go up there to let someone know what had happened?

She was OW Fae for sure, her name told me that much. Back in Otherworld I was Menolly Rosabelle te Maria. But we were a long ways from home, and on this dark, rain-slicked road, Otherworld might as well be a million miles away.

As I said, back in Otherworld, I’m Menolly Rosabelle te Maria. The mother’s first name is always the child’s last name among our Fae kin. But when we came over here to Earthside, my sisters and I chose to use our mother’s last name for our surname, so here, I’m Menolly D’Artigo.

My sisters and I are half-human from our mother’s blood. And we’re half-Fae on our father’s side. Unfortunately, our mother died when we were small, and our father, Sephreh ob Tanu, is currently missing and presumed dead.

We work for the OIA—the Otherworld Intelligence Agency. At first we were ostensibly sent over Earthside due to our poor performance evaluations. In reality, Camille’s supervisor—Lathe—was out for retaliation since she wouldn’t blow him. He bided his time, plotting his revenge, until he was finally able to get rid of her—and us. However, sometimes there’s a silver lining. After a couple years here, and all too many battles, we now run the Earthside division. I’m not sure whatever happened to Lathe, but I have a feeling he’s dead. If we were lucky, maybe some pissed off agent killed him. Whatever the case, he was a prick. One better off out of the gene pool.

During the time Camille worked for him, we were with the YIA—the Y’Elestrial Intelligence Agency. Y’Elestrial being our home city-state. But then, when the OIA was formed and the portals ES opened, Lathe assigned her transfer. He finagled Delilah’s and my transfers, too. We spent a year training on the cultures, habits, and other features of our mother’s people.

So a little more about us. Camille is the oldest. She was born a witch, but thanks to her half-human heritage, her natural powers fritz out at all the wrong times. She’s also a priestess of the Moon Mother, and she’s married to three men: Smoky, a dragon; Morio, a youkai-kitsune who is teaching her death magic; and lastly, but not least, her third husband is Trillian, a Svartan—one of the dark and charming Fae. Camille studies with the Queen of Shadow and Night, out at the ES sovereign Fae nation.

Delilah is our middle sister. A two-faced werecat, her natural Were form is that of a gorgeous golden tabby, long hair with billowing pantaloons. She’s not too good at controlling her shifting in tabby cat form—again the half-human thing. But the Autumn Lord turned her into one of his Death Maidens and she developed a secondary ability to transform into a black panther. The Autumn Lord has decreed that she will one day bear his living child, via proxy father by her lover and fiancé, Shade, who is half–shadow dragon, half-Stradolan—or shadow walker.

Delilah had a twin. Our sister Arial died at birth—we never knew about her till after we moved over ES. Arial lives at Haseofon, the temple of the Death Maidens, emerging only in spirit leopard form. She drops by to help us on occasion, mostly during battles. Delilah was very naïve for a long time, but living Earthside has cured her of that and she’s growing up strong and capable.

And then there’s me, the youngest. Before I was turned into a vampire, I was a jian-tu, an acrobat and spy for the YIA. Hampered by my mixed-breed heritage, I lost control at a crucial moment and landed—literally—in the middle of a nest of vampires. Meaning I fell from my hidey-hole in the cavern roof. Dredge, the worst vamp in OW history, caught me. He tortured and raped me, then turned me. After that, he sent me home, a maddened, crazed creature, to destroy my family.

Luckily, Camille had her wits about her and stopped my attack. The YIA, embarrassed by their fuck-up—they’d sent me in without backup—decided to rehabilitate me rather than stake me. So here I am.

When we were sent Earthside, we thought we’d be pulling a long, leisurely sabbatical, exiled to an out-of-the-way pit stop where we couldn’t fuck up. Little did we know that Shadow Wing, Demon Lord of the Subterranean Realms, was planning a coup on Earth and Otherworld.

He aims to raze both ES and OW to the ground and make them his private stomping grounds. And he’s leading the war on two fronts. Telazhar, his necromancer general in Otherworld, is decimating the land as he leads his army of sorcerers in a war to rival the Scorching Wars of millennia ago. And over here, well… we’re not sure what Shadow Wing’s next step is. But I’m pretty sure we’re going to find out before long.

Eisha clutched her purse as she crossed to my side. The sheets of rain had became a torrential downfall, and she was shivering.

“Do you mind if I sit in your car for a moment? I need to call a friend.”

Shrugging, I nodded. “Get in. It’s cold and you’re going to freeze your ass off while we wait for the cops to get here.” I slid back into the driver’s seat, pushing the airbag out of the way. She did the same on the passenger’s side. I wasn’t sure what to say next. I was already being sued once, and I didn’t relish any more legal problems. And she really didn’t seem all that friendly.

“So you’re from Otherworld? Whereabouts?”

She blinked. “I guess you would recognize that I am. I’ve been over here for about eighteen months. I’m originally from Ceredream. I’m here studying comparative Earthside cultures.”

A lot of budding anthropologists from OW came over to study ES cultures. It was a convenient way to take a long vacation to an exotic land and get educational credit for it.

The arrival of a police cruiser—from the FH-CSI, since I’d called them—saved me from any more small talk. I hurried out of the car, telling Eisha to stay where she was. No use both of us getting soaked through, and she would feel the cold more than I. The officer was Kane—one I recognized—and I ran down what had happened.

“I need to talk to the other driver next.” Kane finished taking my statement. As he tucked away his notebook, the tow truck rolled up.

After pointing out Eisha’s vehicle, we headed back to my car, but Eisha was nowhere in sight.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“She was right here a few minutes ago.” I glanced around. She wasn’t standing in the middle of the street, nor was she near her own car. In fact, there was no sign of her at all.

“Well, fuck. I don’t know. She didn’t seem hurt—where would she wander off to?” A thought struck me. “Maybe she went back to the house—she barreled out of that driveway there.”

I waited in my Jag, and Kane sent his partner up to see if she had returned to the dimly lit house at the top of the drive. A few minutes later, the officer was back. “Nobody there knows who you’re talking about. They said they never had company tonight, and they don’t know anyone by that name, nor anybody who owns an SUV like hers.”

Confused, and more than a little suspicious, we hunted around the area for a while. Fifteen minutes later, we realized that she was nowhere in sight—she’d just vanished. Maybe she’d gone into the woods on the side of the road, but there was no sign of her whatsoever.

Kane finally shook his head. “I’ll get a search party out here. Maybe she was hurt… but something tells me she’s just vanished. Can you still drive your car?”

I tried the ignition and the Jag started up. “Yeah. I lucked out. I think most of my damage is superficial. And I’m not far from home so I’ll just head there and have my sisters take it to the mechanic in the morning.”

“I’ll let you know if we find her. Meanwhile, call her insurance agent and file a claim, I suppose. From what you say, I’m writing it up that she was at fault. But be careful on the way home. We’re in a storm cycle, I think, and it’s supposed to rain like this for several days.”

He motioned for the tow truck to haul Eisha’s SUV off, as I fastened my seat belt. After a moment’s hesitation, I found a knife in my glove compartment. I paused—could they even stuff the airbag back in? Would it ever work again or did they need to replace it? If I sliced through the bag, they’d have to reinstall it full. I frowned, staring at the material that was in the way of my pedals.

Fuck it. I didn’t know enough about cars to make a good guess, so I finally just sawed off the material and dumped it into the backseat. As I pulled out onto the street, my car rattled and clunked, but I wasn’t far from home and I made it safely.

Pulling into the driveway, I turned off the ignition and hoisted my purse over my shoulder. The three-story Victorian we called home loomed against the storm clouds, but it was a welcoming sight. A not-so-much haunted house, even though we were nearing Halloween and Samhain.

So much had changed in the past week… in the past few years… but this was my home. Here, I lived with my wife, my sisters, and their loves, and several of our friends. Come to think of it, I barely thought about life back in Otherworld anymore. I’d come to accept Seattle as home base, and I had the feeling that—given the chance to return to OW—it wouldn’t be such an easy choice.

The past week had been anything but easy.

First, we’d been asked to help out on a case for a couple friends of mine. Tad and Albert, two vampires who worked at Microsoft on the night shift, were worried about Violet, their friend and coworker who had disappeared. We’d started the investigation thinking she’d just skipped town, but had all too quickly figured out that she’d been abducted by a sex slave operation run by Lowestar Radcliffe—a daemon. It was complicated, and involved a lot of hidden factors still, but the upshot was, Grandmother Coyote wanted the daemons stopped and we were in charge of doing so.

Before we could immerse ourselves in the case, my bar had burned down, and we’d been caught in the siege of Elqaneve. The former was heartrending, the latter—traumatic beyond any scope we’d yet experienced. Tens of thousands died as the sentient storm attacked the city, pretty much decimating it. And we’d been there for the throw down. I’d lucked out and been rescued before I could see what was going down in the city proper, but Delilah and Camille had been forced to make their way through the attacks, and the destruction they’d witnessed seemed to have scarred them both heavily.

The storm had wreaked havoc on the Elfin lands of Kelvashan, and now it was on the move to Svartalfheim. All we knew at this point was that the Svartan sorcerers and mages were readying themselves in an attempt to repel the annihilation headed their way.

While we had recovered Amber and Luke, and their spirit seals—along with a spare one—two of the spirit seals were still missing. Venus and Ben, two of the Keraastar Knights wielding them, had not been found. That’s why Smoky and Trillian—Camille’s other husbands—were in OW searching for them right now.

And our father’s body still had not been recovered. He was missing, his soul statue back home had been shattered, and that pretty much spelled out that he was dead. All in all, the past week had been one big clusterfuck.

Nerissa was waiting up for me. She took one look at my face and jumped up from the table where she’d been eating cold fried chicken. Camille and Morio were nowhere to be seen, but Delilah was helping my wife polish off the leftover KFC. I didn’t see the guys anywhere but that didn’t mean they weren’t around.

“Love, what the hell happened? You look shaken up.” Nerissa was an Amazon of a woman. Aphrodite incarnate, she was five-ten, with a tawny mane that shook out wild and shaggy when she took it down from the chignon she usually wore. Curvy, she was voluptuous and ripe, and every time I saw her, all I could think was how wonderful it was that this woman was mine.

My lover, my wife, my companion. I played her body like a rock star’s guitar—wild, passionate, and with a grip that wouldn’t quit. And Nerissa gave as good as she got… she took me to heights no one else could. Roman, I could roughhouse with. With Nerissa, I soared.

I leaned into her arms, resting my head on her chest. “I had an accident.”

“You what? Oh, my gods!” Nerissa pushed me back, staring at me. “Are you all right?” She immediately began to pat me down, looking for broken bones. Delilah took off out of the kitchen and I heard her calling for Camille and Morio. I snorted. That told me what those two had been up to. They never went to bed this early unless they were up for a little action.

“I’m all right. I was shaken, but not hurt. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my Jag.”

Vanzir headed outside to check on the car despite the fact that he had even less of a clue on how they worked than I did.

Nerissa shoved me toward the table and made me sit down. “What on earth happened?”

“Rain-slicked road. I skidded and went hydroplaning. The other driver was going too fast, too. But it was very odd… and I have no idea what to make of it all.” I dropped into one of the chairs, leaning on the table with my elbows. “An OW Fae hit me. But… she vanished before the cops could talk to her.”

“Whose fault was it?” Nerissa pulled a bottle of blood out of the refrigerator—one that Morio had enchanted, so it would taste like something other than type O negative. She popped it in the microwave for a moment.

I shook my head. “Hers. I was going under the speed limit and she pulled out from that driveway like a bat out of hell. I told the cops that, too. I’m not taking the heat for it. I tried to stop but skidded into her. If I hadn’t hit her just right, my Jag would have been mincemeat. She was driving a big old SUV.”

By that time, Camille and Morio had come running down the stairs, dressed in their robes. Camille was flushed and I had no doubt what they’d been up to. Delilah also had Shade in tow. As Nerissa handed me my warmed blood—which tasted like chicken soup—Vanzir popped back inside.

“The Jag looks like it hit the wrong side of a dubbatroll. I doubt if you’re going to get out for under a couple grand on damages, but it’s still drivable.” He shrugged. “At least you were able to make it home.”

I groaned. “Yeah. Would one of you take it to Jason’s tomorrow, to see what he says?” I looked around. “Is Trillian still here?” Trillian had returned home through the portals, escorting Amber and Luke, two friends who had also been caught in the destruction of Elqaneve. Shadow Wing would love to get his hands on them, since they both possessed spirit seals. Now that Queen Asteria was dead and Elqaneve in ruins, it was up to us to hide them and keep them safe.

“No. He went back to OW this evening. They need him there.” Camille’s eyes flickered, and her voice betrayed her worry. “Amber and Luke are sleeping. The spirit seals put high demands on their energy.”

“Damn fine thing. You do realize that, whatever plans Queen Asteria had for the Keraastar Knights, they’ve gone the way of the buffalo? Unless Aeval or Titania knows what her agenda was, we have no clue what she was up to. The knights are bound to their spirit seals—they’ll die if we try to separate them.”

There was no good answer to that one.

“When are the dragons coming for them?” Delilah asked.

Smoky had contacted the Dragon Reaches, and his mother and the Wing Liege had agreed to hide the knights for us. They owed Camille big-time, and this fell directly into the help they’d promised to give her.

“Within a couple of days. They are preparing for them now.” Camille turned as Hanna wandered into the room.

“I heard voices.” She rubbed her eyes. She’d obviously been in bed. So I launched into recounting the evening’s activities again. They needed to know about the Utopia, as well.

“I think we may have a serial arsonist targeting vampire bars. We’re going to have to take action before anybody else gets hurt.”

Hanna headed over toward the sink. “I don’t know about these fires, but the Fae woman you crashed into? She’s trouble. There has to be some reason she vanished. My guess is she was waiting for you. She was parked in the driveway of someone she didn’t know, and pulled out at the very moment you passed by? Too much of a coincidence.” As she put on the kettle, Hanna glanced over her shoulder. “I might as well bake a batch of cookies since you’re all up. I made the dough earlier so all I have to do is fire up the oven.”

I frowned. “Too much about the accident doesn’t add up. At first, I thought she’d just been careless, but yeah. Too many questions. And as to her disappearing? There has to be a reason she didn’t want to talk to the cops. She seemed unsettled when I told her I’d called them.”

“I’d think it was insurance fraud, but you have to stick around to file a claim. Have you called her agency yet?”

“Fraud? Seems more up an FBH’s alley than Fae.” I pulled out my phone, along with the information Eisha had given me, and punched in the 24-hour emergency number. I didn’t have to wait long—miracle of miracles.

The operator who came on the line took my information and asked me to hold, but when he returned, he sounded puzzled. “I’m sorry, Ms. D’Artigo, but we don’t have a record of having anyone by that name as a client, or the SUV in question. I checked our records for the license plate to be certain. Are you sure you have the correct information?”

I knew I hadn’t written anything down wrong. “Yeah, I’m sure. I guess she lied to me. Are you sure, though? You don’t even have a lapsed policy under that name or license?”

Another moment and then, “No, I’m sorry. Nothing. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

I hung up. “Great, the insurance information? A fraud. Want to bet she’s using a fake name, too? That caps it. For some reason, she tried to run me down and when she didn’t manage to get the results she wanted, she vanished. Which means…”

“She was probably trying to kill you. You said yourself that, had she been a fraction more on-target, your car would have been history. That could change the whole face of the game.” Camille glared at the table. “So what about… could Lowestar be behind this attack, too? We know he’s got to be the one behind burning down the Wayfarer. So was he sending another message this time, or was he trying to kill you in the bar’s fire, as well? Catch you in the blaze?”

“Maybe they were trying to kill me and this was a reprisal attack given I survived the fire. But if that’s true, then Shikra is in danger. Because she got the exact same letter and phone calls I did. And she ignored the threats and refused to sell them her club. I told her to keep watch, to get security.”

“Are you going to call Roman and tell him about tonight?” Nerissa leaned forward. “As his consort, don’t you have to?”

“I suppose I should, but we’re getting dangerously close to spilling the beans to him about Lowestar. And if he finds out what’s really going on… a vampire as powerful as he is? Far worse than a testosterone-laden lover. He’d tear the Farantino Building down brick by brick and just make things worse.”

“That may not be a bad idea, really.” Camille glanced over at Hanna. “Chocolate chip?”

“Peanut butter chocolate chip.” Hanna gave her a friendly grin as she slid the first batch into the oven.

I snorted. “I’m beginning to think we need a secretary to take care of all this crap. So we’ll just add keeping an eye on the Utopia—at least on what’s going down there—to our to-do list. Because chances are, Lowestar isn’t going to take her refusal with good spirits.”

Delilah sighed. “Speaking of our to-do list…”

“Please don’t and say we did.” Camille laughed, but there was a raw edge to her voice. We were all nerve-racked.

I cleared my throat. “You know, with all the chaos, I guess we should start having daily meetings to figure out where the hell we are in all of this. We can’t afford to slip up on anything.”

“Right.” Morio motioned to Hanna. “Fuel us with tea and cookies. We’re about to have a brainstorming session.”

“More like a bull session,” Camille grumbled. But she let out a long sigh. “Delilah, do you have our notes?”

Delilah jumped up. “I’ll get them. Meanwhile, fill up my plate with cookies and pour me a glass of milk.” She ran off into the living room, to retrieve her laptop.

“So where does this leave us?” Camille frowned at her cookie. It was piping hot and I could tell she was trying to decide how quickly she could dig into it without burning her mouth.

Delilah didn’t exercise as much restraint. She took a huge bite and immediately began fanning her mouth. “Hot! Hot!”

I snorted. “If you weren’t so impatient, you wouldn’t burn yourself.” I stared at the laptop’s screen, frowning. “You know, we are having one hell of a time prying information out of the cracks about Lowestar Radcliffe. We know he’s a daemon, we know he bought the Farantino Building, and we know he’s been involved with the Farantino family for a couple of hundred years, it looks like. But it’s not like we can just waltz in there and say, Excuse me, would you have a moment to answer some of our questions? Oh—and by the way, fucking get your ass out of Seattle, please.”

“So we need to go in under the radar.” Camille handed Delilah a napkin and began eating her own cookie, which had cooled down enough now so that it didn’t seem to leave a lasting impression.

“Right. And what’s the best way to find out about an organization? From the inside.” I glanced up at her.

Camille shook her head. “Oh no, not again! I was the guinea pig to ferret out Gulakah and I ended up locking heads with him in the Netherworld. I don’t want to go through that again.”

“I wasn’t suggesting it be you.” I frowned, looking over the list of facts we’d managed to accrue. “Violet used the Supernatural Matchups website, didn’t she?”

Delilah nodded, wiping her mouth and taking another cookie. “Right.”

“Then… suppose we create a fake persona? We go on there, see if we can get Lowestar’s notice, and then we… well… when he wants to meet, or his crony—the one who looks like they nabbed Violet—we send someone in undercover. We can worry about who that will be later.” The idea made sense to me. When you wanted to go fishing, you had to use bait, and if you were after a particular kind of fish, you used the bait they liked best.

Delilah and Camille stared at me. At first, I thought they were entertaining the idea.

But then Camille sputtered. “That’s fucking insane. He’d recognize us and no fucking way are we using anybody else for bait. And he’d know you, since we’re pretty sure he tried to buy you out and then kill you.”

Nerissa bit her lip. “I’ll do it.”

Horrified, I jumped up, hands on my hips. “Oh no you fucking won’t. You’re my wife and I won’t put you in danger like that.” I was deadly serious. There was no way I was going to allow Nerissa to get near that goddamn place.

She let out a snort. “Vampire or not, you’re not telling me what to do. I love you, but I want to contribute, and this, this I can do. All you’re going to do is use my picture, right? And I might have to go meet somebody, in which case, you’d be following me—I know that without a doubt. I have the condo still, and nobody’s living there right now. I can use that address so it won’t lead them back here. I will use a fake name. Still going to argue with me?”

Everybody was staring at us. We didn’t argue often, and when we did, it was usually in private. And it was usually Nerissa reading me the riot act for some stupid stunt I’d pulled or attitude I’d copped. Frankly, I was amazed the woman loved me enough to marry me.

I paused. How the hell was I going to deal with this? If I pushed, I knew Nerissa would push back. “What if you did this and they caught you? How would you cope with it? How do you think I’d be able to live with myself?”

“Remember, I was trained by Venus the Moon Child. I can withstand a lot more pain than you know.”

Before he moved to Otherworld and took on the mantle of the Keraastar Knights, the wily shaman emeritus of the Rainier Puma Pride had put Nerissa through her paces in learning how to control pain and channel it through pleasure, and how to heal with her sexuality. He’d also helped her develop her inner strength. When my wife set her mind to something, there was no stopping her.

Camille caught my eye and cleared her throat. “Why don’t we wait for a little bit and talk about it later? We don’t have to decide anything tonight.”

Sometimes she could actually be a good diplomat. Grateful, I nodded. “I’ll agree to that. Nerissa?”

“Fine. But this isn’t over.”

I arched one eyebrow. “I never said it was.” Leaning back in my chair, I shook my head. My cornrows clicked as the ivory beads threaded into them clinked lightly. I was the shortest one of the group—five-one if I was an inch, and I was petite. And my hair was burnished copper, unlike anybody in the family. We never had figured out where that recessive gene came from.

“I do appreciate you volunteering. I’m not saying you can’t do the job right—I’m just frightened for you.” I slaked my gaze over my wife. She would certainly catch Lowestar’s eye, no doubt about it. And that was the problem.

Nerissa let out a loud sigh. “I wouldn’t have offered if I hadn’t meant it. I’m part of this family, too. I want to pull my weight like the rest of you. It’s not like I’m human. I’m stronger, faster, and far more dangerous than any FBH. Ask Chase. He’s thrilled to have me on the job.”

Chase was our friend—a detective and leader of the Faerie-Human Crime Scene Investigation team, or the FH-CSI—who was currently living on our land with his newborn daughter.

“We’ll talk again tomorrow night. If—and that’s a big if—you do this, I want to be here when you create that profile. Speaking of FBHs, where is Chase tonight?” I had half expected to find him hanging out up here at the main house.

“He’s at Iris’s, learning how to be a father. I think he and Bruce are going to be doing a lot of bonding over their mutual experience in fatherhood.” Delilah smiled softly. “I just wish Sharah could be here with him. I hope she’s okay.”

“Everyone back in Otherworld is in danger. Elqaneve is under siege from the goblins right now. Svartalfheim is gearing up for the sentient storm that destroyed the Elfin City. I wonder… if King Vodox’s defenses can’t destroy it, where will sorcerers send it next?” Camille looked at me bleakly.

I knew where the next target would be, and so did she. And so did Delilah. We weren’t kidding ourselves over that one. Nobody wanted to say it out loud. So I decided to be the one to call out the white elephant in the room.

“Y’Elestrial. Where else?”

As a hush fell through the room, a soft chiming sounded from the living room. The Whispering Mirror, summoning us. Which meant we had incoming news. I just hoped that whatever it was, it wasn’t another emergency.